Various government regulations may govern how calls are handled in a contact center. Some of these regulations may regulate what can be said, or what must said, during a call. For example, in some instances regulations may require informing the called party of certain aspects as to the purpose of the call. In other instances, certain agent behaviors may be prohibited or discouraged. For example, with respect to debt collection calls involving collection of debts owed by an individual, aspects of the call may be regulated by the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (“FDCP”). This regulation prohibits agents from certain practices, such as using profane or intimidating language. Such statutes may also prohibit debt collectors from attempting to collect a debt from individuals who have declared bankruptcy. If a debt collector calls a debtor who just filed for bankruptcy or is about to file for bankruptcy, then the agent should cease attempts to collect the debt upon being informed of this. Further, many contact center operators will instruct their agents to then limit their responses to certain inquiries.
In addition, contact centers may have internal policies governing what agents may or may not do under certain conditions. Agents may not be fully trained or experienced to handle all contexts arising in a call, and it is possible that adherence to internal policies are not always followed by agents. Agent training is one approach for minimizing such non-compliant actions, but identifying agents requiring training can be laborious. Recoding the agent's call and reviewing these may serve as one way for identifying agents requiring further training. This allows the agent and their supervisor to review how the agent conducted the call and improve any identified deficiencies. However, this approach does not ensure that agents comply with policies and regulations in real-time, and is merely proscriptive. Further, recording and reviewing only occurs for a fraction of the agent's calls, and a non-complying agent may not always be immediately detected. In some instances, an agent's non-compliance with a regulation can result in a fine to the contact center. Consequently, technologies are required to provide real-time compliance solutions.
Further, speech analytics has matured to the point where such systems can accurately and practically detect specific contexts in a conversation. While some limited applications have been devised for using speech analytics in a contact center to assist agents with information required to handle a current call, no general framework has been defined allowing contact centers to configure systems in a flexible manner to detect and act upon non-compliant agents in real time. It is with these aspects in mind that the concepts and technologies herein are disclosed.